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spk00: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Unify's second quarter fiscal 2022 conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star then one on your telephone keypad. Please be advised today's conference may be recorded. If you require operator assistance during the call, please press star then zero. I'd now like to hand the conference over to A.J. Ecker, Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.
spk05: Thank you, Liz, and good morning, everyone. On the call today is Al Carey, Executive Chairman, Eddie Engel, Chief Executive Officer, and Craig Creatore, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, management will be referencing a webcast presentation that can be found at Unify.com and by clicking the conference call link. Management advises you that certain statements included in today's call will be forward-looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Management cautions that these statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and or projections about the markets in which Unify operates. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks that are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from what is expressed, forecast, or implied by these statements. You are directed to the disclosures filed with the SEC on Unify's forms 10Q and 10K regarding various factors that may impact these results. Also, please be advised that certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EPS, adjusted working capital, and net debt, may be discussed on this call. I will now turn the call over to Al Carey.
spk09: Well, thanks, AJ. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining this call so that we could cover the unified second quarter results. I'll begin with an overview of the quarter. And then I'm going to turn it over to Eddie Engel and Craig Kreator, who will take you through the details of our company's performance in Q2. And then we're going to have a Q&A after that. So to get started, let me just say that I'm enthused about our company's growth potential, especially when you look at the 24% revenue growth in this quarter. But I want to say up front that the underdelivery on profit for the quarter is largely due to U.S. labor shortages in our plants, which has hampered our ability to produce product to the customer demand. We expect that to improve, and we'll talk more about this in the next few minutes. On the sales front, our demand for our products continues to be strong in Q2, and it makes it the sixth consecutive quarter of sequential growth. We're ahead of forecast, and we achieved $201 million in sales, which is a milestone for us. The momentum is going to continue for the next two quarters And we feel confident to say that our revenue forecast could now be raised to $800 million in sales for the fiscal year 2022. For perspective, you're going to have to go all the way back to 2003 to see the last time we achieved $800 million in sales at Unify. So it's a big move forward for us. We also expect the trend to continue beyond fiscal 2022 because we now have all three of our regional geographies with positive top-line momentum. And Reprieve brand continues to accelerate. So in this last quarter, Reprieve got to 40% of our mix, which is the first time we've achieved that level, and the growth on Reprieve was above 30%. We also see Reprieve expanding more rapidly into non-apparel products such as footwear and automotive and industrial furnishings and PPE. This is something that our team's been working on for about a year. And it's coming into reality now, and Eddie will talk about that in a little bit. But our retail brands and our customers are really moving forward with using recycled materials so that they can achieve the sustainability targets in the 2025 goals and their 2030 goals. So it's been a very positive trend for our business. Now, a key point for this past quarter. Our unified sales revenue was plus 24% versus a year ago. but the performance could have been better. It should have been above 30% if we had the labor to produce for all the orders that were in hand in the U.S. plants. Now this labor shortage is something that's a macro issue. It's affecting our industry and many industries. It's the whole issue of higher turnover and difficulty hiring and training people fast enough to get them to replace the turnover people. That difficulty also comes with an extra cost, and it's causing inefficiencies in the plant for the time being. And it's also keeping us from producing to the consumer demand. This dynamic that I'm speaking about on labor has caused about two-thirds of our $4 million miss for EBITDA in the quarter. The other one-third comes from not getting all of the pricing passed along to cover our costs in Q2, but I can tell you right now that those increases have happened by January. So will the labor issues improve? And the answer is yes. Our team has reacted by making sure that we're competitive on wages, we're investing quality training for our new people, and we're even experimenting with new methods of managing our frontline teams. And all of these things are beginning to work. But it will take a little bit more time as this recent COVID uptick has caused some quarantines in the plants so that this labor issue will drift into Q3, but should see improvement by the end of Q3 and significant improvement in Q4. For example, two weeks ago we had 100 people in quarantine in the North Carolina plants. This week we were 70. That should improve as the weeks go on. So we have our work cut out for us on U.S. labor, but we know what to do. We have strong sales momentum in all three geographies. Brazil and Asia's gross profit performance remains strong, and reprieve is now 40% of our mix. On labor, we're listening to our frontline employees. We're trying to find out, and we make sure that they feel that their jobs are more rewarding and they're proud of where they work. And interestingly, as we do extensive roundtables in the plants, if you ask your people how to accomplish this, they have most of the answers, and then you have to act on them. So finally, let me just say this. I really like the strong management team that we've assembled here at Unifi. I like the agility that they're demonstrating as we work through all the curveballs that the pandemic has been throwing us over the last two years. And because of that, I'm quite certain that we're going to be a stronger company coming out of the pandemic than we were going into it. So with that, let me turn it over to Eddie Engel, our CEO, who will take you through more of the details of our performance.
spk03: Thanks, Al, and good morning, everyone. Our second quarter fiscal 2022 EBITDA results were lower than forecasted just three months ago. However, the revenue momentum we are seeing in several key areas provides us with a lot to be optimistic about going forward. We're also seeing volume growth across several market segments, and this is encouraging. However, the quarter didn't come without its challenges, in particular labor and input costs in the US. And Omicron has certainly added unforeseen pressure for our management team and our employees. With that in mind, I think it's important for me to take a moment to say thank you to all our employees globally for their contributions, resilience, and hard work as we navigate towards a full recovery while continuing to grow our business and deliver goods to our customers. I'm proud to be part of this company because of the work each of you do on a daily basis. And moving into the slides, we'll begin on slide three with an overview of the quarter. As you can see, our revenue and volume growth was very positive and is in large part a sign of the continued demand for sustainable materials. Future revenues were up 23.7% on a year-over-year basis, which was ahead of our expectations and the outlook we provided last quarter. We talked a lot about improving the customer experience at UniFi, and I can tell you it is difficult when you cannot meet the demands of the market. By our estimate, had we not had the labor issues in the U.S., we could have potentially added another $5 million to $10 million in revenue during the quarter. And while there's a certain level of confidence within Unified that we can better serve as the customer in the second half of our fiscal year, there are several challenges domestically that continue to weigh in the polyester segment. During the quarter, performance was negatively impacted by inflationary pressures from labor and input costs outpacing our pricing levels. In the U.S., our most significant challenge has been labor, as Al had mentioned, and filling the open positions that strong growth has opened up for us remains a primary focus today. We are doing the right things as an employer and continue to allocate additional resources towards training and retention. We have implemented new and improved training programs that we feel will lead to better results and reduce labor turnover. But there is a learning curve, and it naturally takes time for workers to progress and gain the operating knowledge required to run the various machines and the manufacturing plants. We do expect our current pool of trainees that started in Q2 to continue to increase their productivity and their contributions to be reflected in Q4. Further, our HR team is doing a great job at marketing to our local communities the open positions we have today, and the expectation is that we'll backfill the openings with new talent over the next few quarters. Lastly, we're opening up new overtime-related opportunities for our most seasoned personnel. With all that said, of course, it should be mentioned that the escalation of COVID-19 has created additional short-term labor constraints for us in our manufacturing plants, with up to 5% of our plant workforce currently in quarantine up from last month's number of less than 2%. This is creating additional pressure on our domestic labor situation. But as a country and a global community, and as I talk to other CEOs in our industry, it seems that we're all facing the same challenges. We'll continue to prioritize safety and our employees' health at the highest level and eagerly await the time when the Omicron impact is behind us. As we look forward, we expect U.S. labor challenges continuing to the third quarter, but believe the situation should incrementally improve as we move through Q4 and into Q1 of fiscal year 2023. In recent quarters, we've been proactive in resetting prices to customers to keep up the increasing costs of raw materials. Now, with the inflation that we've seen in other areas of the business, we've had to institute additional price increases at the beginning of January. This was driven primarily by labor and other durable materials in the polyester and nylon segments. These increases should generate significant margin recovery as we move forward. From a market segment perspective, we are seeing an uptick in the denim markets in Brazil, and as expected, a cooling off in the home furnishings and mattress market there. Our Asian business was stronger than normal in Q2 as apparel and shoe production in Vietnam opened up, the energy shortage in China subsided, and the timing of the Lunar New Year, being almost two weeks earlier than last year, pushed demand into our fiscal quarter too. We saw a volume uptick in the US and South America, driven primarily by the demand for quick-turn apparel and SOC programs. Our automotive business was slower than normal in both Brazil and the US due to the ongoing reduction in the production of light-duty cars and trucks. So moving to slide four, let's talk about reprieve. Our market awareness continues to grow, and our customers' commitment to sustainable products is clearly expanding. As a result, Reprieve Fiber represented 40% of our sales mix during the quarter for the first time, an indication of the strong demand and growing momentum it is experiencing. Specifically, the H&M Circular Design Story Collection launched in December, a sustainable initiative that focuses on forward-thinking design and innovative materials with circularity in mind. The collection features Reprieve Our Ocean in multiple items, including the puffer jacket, an asymmetric dress, cut-out slim blazer, pleated shorts, and suit vests. Continuing with our momentum in Europe, German retailer Tom Taylor launched a new denim as part of their B-part sustainable products collection, including Alexa skinny jeans, in addition to the existing line of jackets, scarves, and swim shorts. Next, Costco placements are continuing to grow across tri-release base layers, Kirken signature socks, and even more denim. Outside of the apparel market, de novo brands has expanded reprieve into Gajaro chairs, which is in the top three of market share in camping and sideline seating. We're excited about the breadth of reprieve and the brand placements that continue to expand. Now, stepping back into the overall business, our operating environment remains healthy outside of the U.S. labor tightness, and we have seen no significant disruptions to our operations despite the Omicron spike. Customer demand has been stronger across all segments. We believe our supply chain partners and our competitors are also experiencing the same headwinds that we've mentioned today. Our performance through these challenges makes us even more optimistic about what we can do during normal business conditions. Financial performance in Brazil and Asia business segments remain solid and affect the agility of the respective management teams in reacting to the ever-increasing changes in the marketplace. On a positive note, In the U.S., the installation and productivity for our new EFK evoCooler machines are meeting our high expectations, and the impact of this increased efficiency should be noticeable beginning in Q4 and beyond. I'll close with a quick update on our current trade action before handing the call over to Craig. In November 2021, the U.S. International Trade Commission determined that the U.S. textile industry had been severely impacted by imports from certain countries. As a result, the Commerce Department finalized anti-dumping duties on all subject imports in December 2021. Accordingly, we continue to look forward to an annual step within sales for polyester moving forward. With that, I'll return the call over to Craig. Craig?
spk01: Thank you, Eddie, and good morning, everyone. As Al and Eddie mentioned, there's a lot of positive elements in the just-completed quarter, and we are focused on the specific actions being taken on North American labor challenges. Demand for our products continues to grow at a very high level and our management team is focused on growing our business for the future. I'll summarize the financial performance from the quarter as follows. We were able to achieve revenue performance ahead of our expectations while the U.S. labor and input cost challenges that Eddie and Al described dampened our ability to convert the strong revenue into similarly strong profitability. That profitability shortfall also unfavorably impacted our effective tax rate because the step down in overall U.S.-based earnings did not allow us to fully benefit from certain U.S. tax attributes. Let's turn to slide five of the webcast presentation. Consolidated net sales increased 23.7% from $162.8 million to $201.4 million. continuing the trend of sequential sales growth since the pandemic began two years ago. The just-completed quarter represents our sixth consecutive quarter of increased revenues, and the first time we have exceeded $200 million in quarterly revenues in over eight years. For the polyester segment, the single-digit volume increase could have been better but was muted by the labor challenges Eddie mentioned earlier. The price and mix change demonstrates the selling price adjustments that have been made over the past several months in response to rising import costs, although we have not fully normalized the portfolio for today's cost levels. In Asia, the sales volume growth demonstrates new and existing programs that continue to be successful on the free platform, while higher pricing associated with raw material costs was offset by a greater mix of lower-priced products. In Brazil, year-over-year price levels followed market dynamics as this segment continues to exhibit strength in holding prices in market position, driving a price-mix benefit of 33.3 percent, although lower volumes were the result of a comparatively strong quarter in the prior year. Nylon exhibited stability with much higher sales, production volumes, and pricing levels to continue its fiscal 2022 recovery. Turning to slide six for the quarterly gross profit, the polyester segment's $10.5 million decline in gross profit and weaker gross margin percentage are attributable to the labor and input cost headwinds. We attributed approximately two-thirds of the gross margin decline for this segment to the labor issues and approximately one-third to the input cost increases combined with the normal lag for customer pricing changes. We look forward to this segment quickly recovering in calendar 2022 from recent pressures. The Asia segment's volume growth led to a $2.0 million post-profit. As that segment continues its strong year-over-year growth trajectory, it remains a significant component of the global commercial model. In Brazil, we've maintained much of our recently captured strength. demonstrated by a decline in gross margin from the exceptionally high 32.9% to a still very strong 27%. Despite the headwinds that pressured our U.S. operations, we are pleased with a combined Brazil and Asia double-digit percentage increase in both sales and gross profit. That great performance is even more prominent in the six-month comparison on slides 7 and 8. Slide seven shows the consolidated six-month sales increase of 30.6 percent versus the year-ago period, lifted by a healthy combination of volume, pricing, and mix across our segments. Slide eight provides a gross profit overview for the six-month comparison. Shown here, the polyester segment was pressured by the previously discussed headwinds. The Asia segment exhibited an increase in gross margin with recent mix and efficiency gains. And the Brazil segment's exceptional performance is highlighted with a $4.9 million increase in gross profit. Moving on to slide nine, which provides a brief update to our balance sheet and capital allocation priorities. We ended the second quarter with zero borrowings on our ABL Revolver, which had an availability of $69 million as of December 26, 2021. Under our balanced approach to capital allocation, we expect to continue to invest in the business to drive innovation and organic growth, maintain a strong balance sheet, and remain opportunistic with share repurchases and or M&A opportunities. As noted on this slide and as we described in the press release, we spent $1.2 million to repurchase 51,500 shares under the previously announced share repurchase program. Before I pass the call back to Eddie, I will remind everyone that UNIFI will be hosting an Investor Day event next month, February 16th, at our manufacturing facility in North Carolina. We look forward to interacting with the investment community by providing an opportunity to hear from several members of our leadership team under the backdrop of our world-class facilities. For those who can't attend in person, we will also webcast the event. I'll now pass the call back to Eddie to take us through the last slides of the presentation and make some final comments.
spk03: Thank you, Craig. Before we conclude today's call, I'd like to finish with slide 10 of the presentation and discuss our outlook and expectations for the second half of the fiscal year. As disclosed in our earnings release, we have issued guidance for the remainder of the fiscal year, and we remain confident in achieving these targets despite near-term challenges in Q3. As we have highlighted in this call, our revenue numbers have exceeded our expectations, leading us to increase our previous top-line outlook for the fiscal year 2022. We must continue to work through all of the global uncertainties, including ongoing labor pool constraints in our domestic segments, the Omicron variant and the impact of the pandemic, and the inflationary pressures on packaging and supply costs. We anticipate uncertainties in the near term that are confident in our workforce, as well as the new trainings that's in place to better prepare our staff. Despite these uncertainties, our strong revenue performance from the second quarter supports our belief in continuous improvement throughout fiscal 2022. For the full year fiscal 2022, we expect sales to reach $800 million or more, an increase of 20% from fiscal year 2021's revenues. Given this quarter's profitability results, we've adjusted our fiscal 2022 EBITDA forecast slightly lower, but we believe our recent pricing initiatives will help us make up a fair amount of the recent challenges. Our CapEx outlook remains consistent with the first quarter and should be falling in the range of $40 million to $44 million. Sustainability remains a key area of focus of our business, and we are pleased to see the demand increase for recycled products as awareness around the market of sustainable products continues to grow. Knowledge around the importance of sustainable products continues to be moving markets on a global scale. We look forward to continuing our path of long-term organic growth to our global business model and aim to capture the necessary demand for more environmentally conscious materials. We will now open the line for questions.
spk00: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press the star, then the number one key on your touch-tone telephone. To withdraw your question, please press the pound key. Our first question comes from Chris McGinnis with Sidoti.
spk08: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. And obviously, a nice quarter on the top line. Obviously, I understand the pressures on the bottom line. I guess just to dig in a little bit more on the pricing and raw material inflation. Did I hear you right that after January price increase that you will be on par with where the pricing is now? And how do you see pricing play out over the next maybe 12 months? And then maybe can you also discuss a little bit more around the labor? You know, it sounded like it may be more personnel versus mandates. Can you just dig into the issue around that labor and how hard it's been to maybe retain labor or find labor?
spk03: Yeah, two questions. Thanks for those, Chris. You know, on the pricing side, you've been on these calls for many years, and you have heard over the years that we've lagged, generally speaking, as prices go up, and we generally are slow to give up pricing as raw materials drop. We have been raising prices over the last nine, ten months, and we took the step to basically catch up all of the pricing that was necessary at the beginning of January. And so we do believe it's been difficult for our customers, it's been difficult for our sales team, but those prices have been passed on effective January 3rd. And you will see us going forward to be more reactive as raw material costs go up and other inputs costs go up in the future. Jumping to the labor side of things, you know, it's Q2 was very dramatic, as you can see from the margins. And it was a result of what happened over the summer catching up to us. We had been working as well on changing how we approach the hiring, how we approach the training. And that big initiative was really implemented mid-Q2. And that's why we're confident in saying, as we move to Q3 and Q4, our labor situation is going to be much improved. The labor shortage, we were expecting a big bump up in applicants at the beginning of September when a lot of the benefits had fallen off. We didn't see that, but that wasn't really an impact on our business. I think it was just the fact that across the country, and North Carolina included, People just, they've saved up enough money. We're not sure what it was, but we are totally approaching how we are onboarding employees, how we are training our employees, and how we are interacting with our employees. We've got good pay rates. We've got good operations. We've got clean workplaces. So it's a matter of us, which is what we're doing, improving on our training and our retention plans. I hope that answers your question. Chris, I just want to... No, I appreciate that.
spk09: throw one more in here. The actual turnover rates have improved as we got to the end of the calendar year. And the trainees have been retained better than we've been doing in the past. So we feel like we're making some progress. And then, you know, bad luck and then COVID comes back in and we have all these quarantines in the month of January. Now, the good news is they seem to be coming back. I'm very optimistic because we asked employees what they needed, and we've taken those costs. We've spent the money, and now if we could just get our turnover rate back to where it needs to be, those costs get absorbed into the business quite handily. So I'm optimistic, but it's been a difficult one.
spk08: Great. No, I really appreciate the insight. And then just a question on A's and that growth. It's obviously been phenomenal for a long time, and it sounds like With the guidance for $800 million, there's even more behind that. Can you just talk about maybe your order book and how that's playing out? And is all the demand largely related to reprieve? Thanks.
spk03: Well, as you saw, we had a record reprieve percentage at 40%. That is a big part of our growth. There is growth, of course, because of the price point management we've been doing, price adjustments we've been making over the last several months. But I think more importantly, the volume growth that we saw in Asia, which is predominantly Reprieve, really reflected the market sentiment around sustainable products. Every quarter that we go by, we add more and more brands jumping onto the safety and security and trustedness of the Reprieve brands. And I think that's what's reflected. And you'll see in Brazil, There will be growth in Q4 from a volume perspective. We'll see in the U.S. growth in Q4 also. So we are expecting volume growth as we move through the remaining part of our fiscal year, as well as upside on the pricing side.
spk08: Great. Thanks for taking my questions, and I'll jump back in queue. Thank you. Thanks, Chris.
spk00: Our next question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities.
spk06: Sorry about that. Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to maybe just follow up on that last train of thought, which is the 30% growth you saw in reprieve in the quarter. Any more detail in terms of price versus volume? And similar, same question for the 20% plus expected revenue growth for fiscal 22.
spk03: Yeah, so if you look at where a lot of the volume growth was, it was in Asia. And the volume growth was in line with the revenue growth. And it was mainly because we're just adopting more programs. And it's across the platform of products that we have. We've grown out the product portfolio in Asia beyond our normal textured yarn to stable fiber to many other different types of products. And it's reflective of the interest that the market has in reprieve. And we're really excited about that because we see that that momentum is going to continue on throughout the fiscal year. Of course, the Chinese New Year, the Lunar New Year is coming up. And that happens every year, of course. But we're certainly seeing growth as we move through Q3 past the Lunar New Year and into Q4. in China. And like I said, in Brazil, we are expecting volume growth in Q4. And interestingly enough, I think we're going to, even though we've started off from a small base in Brazil, we're going to double our revenue sales, our reprieve revenue in Brazil year over year in that region. So we're excited about that. And then in the U.S., once we get our labor situation improved by Q4, we will be producing more pounds. Our expectation is we'll be producing more pounds and a lot of those pounds will be reprieved.
spk09: You know, this is an anecdote, but Dan, Walmart has begun to work on these recycled materials quite a bit, and we just had an announcement that they passed the one billion bottle mark, but it's amazing the kind of tonnage they can do because they went from, you know, fairly low on that scale to all the way to a billion and they could get to 2 billion bottles if they decided to put their shoulder behind it. So that's just one little indicator, but an important one.
spk06: Got it. That's helpful. And, you know, obviously you've been more aggressive. You've had to be in terms of pricing to try to protect margins as input costs increase and now, you know, labor challenges and inflationary pressures. Maybe just talk about the – the conversations with customers? Are you seeing any more pushback, you know, after several rounds of price increases and this, you know, more significant one in January?
spk03: Yeah, as I said earlier, it has been very difficult for our sales team, um, as it has been obviously for our customers. But at the end of the day, I think most of our customers have said everybody else is doing it. So I think in the past we've been, uh, We've been more reticent to sort of bite the bullet and just pass on increases as they've happened. That has changed. I think the customer's seeing a new Unify. And I think it's not just Unify that's doing that. It's our competitors, and there are other suppliers that are out there in the marketplace. So I think this inflation that happened was a shock to our system, and we recognize that we have to be responsible and pass those costs on as quickly as possible, and we're doing that now. And like I said, it's been painful for us, for our customers, but we're not alone.
spk06: And for the most part, your competitors are following suit. That was my follow-up question. Yes, yes, they are indeed. All right, last one is you projected previously $20 million incremental revenue from the tariffs in 2022. Are you seeing early indications of that taking hold, and how's your visibility around that today versus maybe six months ago?
spk03: Yeah, we are getting a lot of interest from customers who have traditionally been importing a lot of yarns from overseas. We are taking those calls, and we are beginning the process of having the commercial relationships and pricing those items out, and that's when we expect starting in Q4 start seeing that volume come through.
spk06: Okay, very helpful. I'll jump back with any follow-ups.
spk00: Our next question comes from Gus Richard with Northland.
spk04: Yes, thanks for taking the question. Just wondering, you know, what is the price and availability of recycled PET plastic at this point?
spk03: Yeah, the question, it was interesting in Q2, it had been slightly lower than what was in our Q1 for various reasons. We are seeing an uptick, which is normal for this time of year as the collection rate is reduced and because of weather and also because people are just drinking less water or soft drinks during the colder temperature. So as normal, prices are going up for PET. There is pressure on supply. As I said on many calls, we have the ability to buy the materials. We just have to pay more for it. But it's expected.
spk04: And then just to give a sense of your cost of goods, what percentage is labor at this point?
spk03: It depends on the product. We have some products where they're not so labor-intensive, and there are some products that are. Our challenge has been to make sure we have the right labor at the right place. And our installation, and we haven't talked about this, but our installation of our Evo EFKs, as we expand that in our plant in Yadkinville, is taking labor pressure off. So that's why we've said on the call in Q4, part of the reason we're seeing we're expecting less labor pressures because we'll have more and more of the EFK running, which has higher productivity levels per person, per pound, per hour. It's a difficult question to answer, but in certain areas it is a significant part of our cost, but raw materials always remain the largest part of our cost by far.
spk04: Got it. And I'm assuming that the new texturing machines, you know, you need fewer operators per pound or one operator can, you know, manage more systems than the older versions.
spk03: Yeah, there's higher productivity with the new equipment.
spk04: And then the last one for me, you know, you're top-line growth, can you sort of parse out how much of that is pricing and how much of that is volume?
spk01: Yeah, I guess for the just-completed quarter, we put some details in there on slide five, and it does go through and say that in the just-completed quarter, roughly about eight percentage points of that growth came from volume. The rest of it really came from pricing. A little bit of favorability from FX, and that's mostly in China because of the strength of their currency. But basically in this just completed quarter, the majority of what we saw was from price, but we still saw also an 8% volume increase as well.
spk04: Got it. Got it. Thank you. That's it for me. Thanks, Gus.
spk00: Our next question comes from Marco Rodriguez with StoneGate Capital.
spk02: Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my questions. Good morning, Marco. Good morning, Marco. Good morning, guys. I have a couple quick just follow-ups. A lot of the questions have been asked and answered, but just kind of circling back on the inflationary pressures, the pricing increases that you've been able to implement, and you made some comments to an earlier question about, you know, pretty much everyone's in kind of the same boat. Most people are expecting this, and everyone's kind of pushing these prices through. But I was wondering if you can maybe share any sort of anecdotal information maybe that you're receiving from your clients, perhaps as to what sort of this impact of increasing prices is doing to retail demand and what sort of the expectations are there as we look forward the next few, say, six to 12 months.
spk03: We haven't had, you know, we haven't had any of our customers, or any, I should probably, we have had no, very few customers say, Because of your price increases, the demand will drop. We're still seeing very strong demand. I mean, we can't predict what's going to happen in 12 months. But today, the price increases have not impacted the demand of our products. And it's because I think there's two reasons. One, there's still a lack of inventory in the supply chain. And two, in the US and in Central America, because of the supply constraints that are going on, there's a lot more We believe the brands are trying to move more business into the region so they can get quick-turn products. So for us, our local... The fact we're local in the U.S. and Central America is helping us, and it's really, I guess, keeping up the demand in the system. Got it. Very helpful.
spk04: And then... I'm sorry, go ahead.
spk09: I'm sorry. I was just going to say... Looking at other categories in retail, consumers seem to be willing to pay and take on the new prices across the board. I'm not just talking about apparel or our business. It's surprising, but we see that continuing for 12 months at least.
spk02: Got it. Very helpful. And then circling around on the demand for reprieve, you've obviously been the flag bearer, if you will, for the recycling and sustainability aspects of of the particular product. And it seems to be obviously doing very well. And you're getting a lot of high revenue growth rates, the percentage of your revenue is increasing for reprieve. I was just kind of wondering if maybe you could talk a little bit about what sort of competitive reactions you may have seen given the success that you've had. And if you can maybe talk a little bit about the current competitive landscape would be helpful.
spk03: Yes, so Reprieve is an ecosystem. It is, you know, recycles inputs, but it's also, as you've heard from us before, it's a trusted product. Because of the fact that we have fiber print technology, you know, a tracer, because of the fact that we have our own verification, U-Trust verification system that we've just announced, we verified that the fabric or the yarn and now the product that you're making is made from reprieve and and the fact that we have third-party certification saying yes this is recycled content and the fact that in the US from the Higgs report says that our recycled polyester actually even has less carbon footprint than than our competitors all of that together and the fact that we have great service from a brand sales team calling on these retailers and we're able to give the the brand's collateral to help them co-brand their sustainable story along with the brief. That's what makes us different from everybody else. And we are very far apart from our competitors that are just selling recycled polyester or nylon yarns.
spk02: Got it. Very helpful. And is there an expectation perhaps? I'm just kind of along those lines of thinking. How big of a lead do you think you guys might have in terms of what you're able to provide to your customers versus competitors' abilities?
spk03: We just keep investing in our marketing. We keep investing in our co-branding. We keep investing in working on markets that are going beyond our traditional apparel markets. I think the investment we're making in people to... get to new markets and to expand reprieve is working both in Asia and in the US. I don't compare us to our competitors who are selling normal recycled products and I think the differentiator is the entire package that we have.
spk09: Some of these retail brands that are big, as they get closer to aiming for their targets for 2025, they come to the realization that they need to make sure they can defend that these are actually recycled materials, so they don't want to be greenwashed. And our tracer really helps that case. So I think we end up having a real competitive advantage with the tracer.
spk02: Understood. I appreciate your time. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Thanks, Mark.
spk00: As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, that is star, then one. Our next question comes from David Silver with CL King.
spk07: Yeah, hi. Good morning. I had kind of several questions mostly on type of follow-up, but First question would be on the anti-dumping duties, decisions that have been made. I'm just borrowing from my experience with anti-dumping duty actions in other products for other companies I've tracked. But typically it takes a long time to get to the final decision, but the final decision usually does impact the trade flows pretty directly. And in your release, you comment on the $20 million or more annual revenue boost, and you cite purely pricing as the source of that. But I think in your comment to a previous question, you focused more on incremental demand. So I'm just wondering maybe if you could just take a step back and just talk about how you believe the – final anti-dumping duty decisions are going to impact the market, like what percentage of imports or the total market that's relevant to Unify is represented by, you know, the four countries mentioned. And, you know, maybe in addition to pricing, do you all, you know, what kind of improvement in volume potential do you see? Thank you.
spk03: Yes, so as we said, we do expect to pick up about $20 million in revenue, and the imports are in at a lower price than some of our, they're more commodity type items. So the pricing, the average price is lower for those products. What we are seeing is a lot more interest from these companies who either have been buying from an importer, a distributor, or buying directly from the company out of Asia. And, you know, it's When you've been used to buying imports for a long time, there is a transition that has to take place. As we talked before, we had anti-dumping cases against India and China that moved this business over, a lot of it over to these four countries that we talked about. We are seeing a lot more phone calls come through, a lot more interest in trying to figure out what products they should buy from us and at what volumes. And like I said, we're still expecting to get the volume as we move into Q4 of our fiscal year and then beyond that for the rest of the year. From a pricing point of view, like I said, they're at the lower end of the price range because a lot of them are commodity run-and-gun products.
spk07: Okay, great. And then maybe I just have a question about the, I guess I'll call it the cadence of price increases, so it sounds like you've been a little bit trying to catch up with the cost environment and you believe you'll get back fully beginning in January. But I'm just wondering, just in general, if there are other significant moves in costs that you need to recapture. What is the cadence for implementing a price increase and then seeing it fully implemented? Does it differ by customer or region? I mean, I'm imagining Brazil, they're used to price swings and devaluations and whatnot. It might be different in other markets. So just in general, when there is a meaningful price or cost, a cost issue that affects the industry, what happens? What is the lag that UNIFI typically sees before you can recoup that via a formal price increase?
spk03: Yeah, in Brazil, and you can see this from our numbers, they have been very reactionary to increases. And the biggest increase they've had to experience was around the raw material. But inflation has occurred there, and they've been very quick to pass on those costs. Asia, again, it's been, generally speaking, as cost increases, we've been able to pass that along. And that's where you've seen the margins being pretty stable there. In fact, the margins have increased there as the quality of the product mix we're selling has improved in Asia. And then here in the US is where it's been much more of a harder process and a longer process to pass on all the increases. In the past, we've generally just talked to our customers around the cost of raw material increases. This last increase was different because we didn't just talk about raw materials. We also talked about the other costs, like manufacturing costs, labor, and packaging, and oil, and all that stuff that goes into making our products. And going forward, you can expect us to be more reactive here in the U.S. and Central America than we have been in the past.
spk07: Okay, and then just thank you for that, and then just the last one, but regarding your investment in new yarn texturing machinery, would you say that the equipment is fully installed and commissioned and operating now, or where are you on your, in terms of reaching the completion, I guess, of that investment and upgrading program.
spk03: We've been installing equipment steadily since the beginning of our fiscal year. We will be making, at our investor day in a couple of weeks, we'll be giving a lot more detailed information about the timing and the size of that capital investment. So if you can just hang on a couple of weeks there and listen in, David, you'll hear a lot more information about that.
spk09: We're at the very early days right now, David, of installing that equipment.
spk07: Got it. Okay. Well, that would be very interesting to see close up then. All right. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you, David. Thanks, David.
spk00: Our next question comes from Daniel Moore with CJS Securities.
spk06: Thank you again. Covered a lot of ground. One or two more quick ones. Obviously, North American polyester margins have a, you know, clearly significant room for recovery. Just talk about your confidence in the sustainability of margins you're generating in Asia and Brazil and, you know, whether there's still some long-term upside potential there.
spk03: Yeah, I'll jump to Brazil. Over time, we've seen the last three quarters, four quarters, as we've communicated a reduction in the gross margin there. And we've been able to maintain that margin for much longer than we'd expected. But over time, in the next couple of quarters, it'll return to more normal margins. But as I said, the volume should be increasing in Brazil in Q4. So that will offset the decline in margins. In Asia, we've been very steady. Here in the US and Central America, where the challenge has been, we do expect to see a significant recovery in margins beginning this quarter because of the pricing initiatives we've taken. And then as we move through the next six months, as we improve the productivity of the workforce, as we get stability in the turnover and the number of new employees, and we get that training behind us, we do expect to see margin improve as we improve our productivity. So instant pricing beginning of the quarter, and then over the next six months, improvement in our manufacturing costs. to increase the margin.
spk06: Helpful. And lastly, for me, I look forward to more detail on the EvoCooler investments and where that will take you. Any more sort of preview around the types of things we might hear at the upcoming Analyst Investor Day? Not necessarily specific metrics, but what type of longer-term targets or goals you might
spk01: Yeah, it's a good question, Dan. I think really for us, we're continuing to work toward that day as a time for us to really give more details on the strategy of Unified beyond just the quarter-to-quarter reporting. So that will be a big component of it. Innovation will be a big component of what we're planning to do. We also plan to talk quite a bit about sustainability and how that plays in with reprieve demand. And then doing that in the context of actually allowing folks to see the facilities and see the EVO coolers and other machinery that we have specifically in our Yadkinville facility. So we really planned it out to be a pretty thoughtful day as far as giving investors and interested parties more details around who Unify is, what we're doing, and what makes us different.
spk06: All right. Look forward to it. Thanks for the detail and the color. Thanks, Dan. Thanks, Tom.
spk00: That concludes today's question and answer session. I'd like to pass the call back to management for closing remarks.
spk05: Thank you, Liz, and thank you, everyone, for participating today. Our momentum is clear, and we believe we're set up for a strong second half for Fiscal 22. Our next earnings release for the third fiscal quarter ending March 27th is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, April 27th. after the close of the market, with a conference call to follow the next morning, Thursday, April 28, at 8.30 a.m. Eastern Time. Thanks again for joining today's call.
spk00: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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